Morning journal and courier., 1887-03-02

| stricted by their contract with the govern | ment. Mr. Elliott is convinced that this | contract is faithfully observed and that un- l der the present system of inspection it could 1 not be seriously violated. He speaks very | highly of the administration of the company, the great improvement they have made in the l physical condition of their Aleutian employees and the good order maintained in their set- l clement. There are about four hundred peo- pie on the two islands, three-fourths of them St. Pauls. Only eighteen are white. The Aleuts are somewhat mixed race, with l considerable infusion of Russian blood. They | belong to the Russo Greek church, which seems to exercise good influence over them, | and our author comments their manners and | disposition, although it must be confessed | that they neither temperate nor chaste. The island life of the seals, however, is far more interesting than that of the human beings. They arrive from the deep sea in l May. The bulls, fat and strong, and weigh ing about five hundred pounds each, land first and take possession of the rookeries,
 each picking out site for his harem and fighting for it, and holding as much as he can defend; and before the first females ap- pear the whole ground is thus appropriated
 and mapped out. The COWS arrive in June
 and July, filling the seraglios as fast as they
 come ashore, bringing forth young almost
 immediately (the period of gestat1on being
 nearly year,, but remaining under the
 guardianship of the bulls until the approach
 of winter, when the establishments gradually
 break up, and all Gncluding the pups who
 have meanwhile learned to swim) return to
 the ocean. During the entire breeding sea-
 son the males under six years of age are com
 pelled by the old bulls to keep their distance
 and they herd together on their own side of
 the islands. The bachelors" as the natives
 call them, number about one million five
 hundred thousand The bull seals go entire
 ly without food and water during the whole harem season of three or four months-an abstinence which has no parallel in the ani nal kingdom, because they bear it not while they are in a torpid state, but in their condi- tlon of highest fighting activity. They re- turn to the sea in winter extremely emacia- ted. The females, which are not more than quarter as large as the bulls, do not fast, but take to the water every day or two In search of food. The killing has none of the excitement of the chase. It is 8 safe and prosaic form of butehery, the docile victims being easily separated from the head and driven to the slaughtering grounds, where their skulls are beaten in with clubs and the skin is immediately removed. It is only from the middle of June to the first of Au- gust that the fur is in prime condition, and all the killing should consequently be done between those dates Formerly the whole population of St. Paul and St. George re- quired at least three months to take the law full quota of one hundred thousand skins. Now the same number of men do the work in less than thirty days. The difference is the result of the policy of the company, who keep the people in vigor through the winter
 by giving them comfortable houses, fuel and
 good food. MT. Elliott gives full descrip-
 tion of the method of storing, curing and
 preparing the skins, and nobody who has read it will wonder at the cost of sealskin sacaues.